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Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Sitting here on a break during my business trip to Malaysia, figured I would finally get around to writing about Gen Con this year. The prelude to GC was stressful as I decided the best thing I could possibly do before driving to Indy was get into a car accident. The Tucson is now in the great auto graveyard as its life force has run out. I will miss the vehicle that took me to and from Indy many times between 2009 and 2015.

With my rented Jeep Compass, the boy and I headed to Indy on Tuesday night after first stopping somewhere in middle Indiana at a Meijer to get some snacks and drinks for the week. Called ahead to the hotel to check-in since a traffic back-up could have prevented us from arriving before midnight; but we got there just after 11pm.

Wednesday we spent setting up for the auction since both of us were working as volunteers this year. The boy took well to my fellow volunteers and worked hard and spent most of the day checking sellers' items into the auction. He did quite well.

We stopped at the Crowne to get a burger and some hummus in the restaurant after finishing around 6pm at the auction. Ahead of that, I went to the GM HQ to get all the Peryton Gamer group's badges that would be handed off later that night. I had a game to run at 9pm that I was utterly unprepared for once again, an increasingly frustrating habit I have found myself in. While I was probably going to be good with what I had, not feeling 100% and the boy being a bit tired pretty much finalized the notion to not show up, which I am not all that proud of. My vow from this point on I will never cancel or miss another game that I commit to running. The Quitter's Club ends now for me. Also hooked up with Tom and the LARPers, dropping off the badges and giving Tom a key he could use to store the LARP props since most of their games were next door at the Union Station. The boy got some more reading in, 1984 for the upcoming school year.

Thursday morning - we are at the auction by 830am. We left at about 130pm along with Harper and his daughter Brooklyn to run our Circus Imperium game. 8 players showed up with Harper/Brooklyn set to play with generics. Another friend of ticketed player also showed up so Brooklyn and Harper were OK with using only space so the other dude could also play. Fun game where 7 or 8 teams of beasts were ultimately whipped and rammed to death. Brooklyn had the win in hand, but took it well when it seemed multiple people were interfering with her ability to finish the race. I gave her a prize as well since she really was a bit picked on and most any other person would be upset.

Back to the auction after the game where we worked the rest of the night. We made it back to the hotel and stopped at the restaurant close to 11pm, past the time they normally served burgers. However, our server from the previous night hooked us up with burgers and fries that we could take back to the room along with some complimentary beverages as we waited.

Friday was pretty much the same schedule as the previous day. We had a full table with 9 of the ticketed players showing up and a group that pretty much knew each other which is always fun. They did have one extra ticket which they gave to the one standby player. Levi was also there; he had played in the game the previous day (was the first die on Thursday). This game featured one player with an awesome 'whipping' sound affect; he whipped his beasts so much that he was forced to abandon his chariot as it was about to fall apart. A lot of cab changing and fighting between the racers as well. One guy way in the lead played it too safe and one bad cornering decision led to the victory from the boy who with his father had also played in our game last year.